In his postlude to The Mozart Effect author Don Campbell shares miracle stories of treatment and cure through music. Excerpts recount music and its role in the treatment and healing of abuse, pain, aggressive and antisocial behavior, attention deficit disorder, depression, developmental delays, high blood pressure, etc. The benefits of music are limitless.
As the American educational system seeks to cut the arts from classroom experience, we see children and adolescents seek out more available forms of art – usually portraying the more violent and dark side of life. Young people perceive, and then opt to imitate the art that fuels their imagination.
Education can offer a positive approach to fueling that imagination leading toward the productive lives we want our children to meet by providing a healthier experience.
There are those trying to do that. Be sure to watch as CBS’s 48 HOURS presents The Whole Gritty City, Saturday, February 15th at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Some say society is ill and we need to do something to heal it. Will we help?
“Each illness has a musical solution. The shorter and more complete the solution, the greater the musical talent of the physician.”
I’ve taught for many years in a system that I have often questioned when it comes to students and learning disabilities. As an outside-of-the-box thinker, I’ve always hoped for more freedom in teaching to reduce the necessity for a child being labeled as learning disabled when I thought there might be a better way.
In my opinion, schools need to offer a more “balanced” curricula including both visual and performing arts as well as extended opportunity for inquiry and exploration. If offered, I believe we would have a much smaller ESE population. Walk into any ESE class and you will find talented students in these areas. If not, you’ll find students who lack focus because their minds are sparked with imagination and their personalities are bursting at the seams from the skill and drill activities they take part in.
Google search famous people with learning disabilities and you’ll find less than average students who had the tenacity and intrinsic abilities (not valued by education) to prove their teachers wrong. I share a list and a YouTube presentation. Both are inspiring and encouraging.
Famous people with learning disabilities:
ADD/ADHD
WillSmith, Jim Carey, Tom Cruise, Sylvester Stallone, Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Michael Jordan, Bruce Jenner, Magic Johnson, Terry Bradshaw, Babe Ruth, Greg Louganis, Vince Lombardi, Pablo Picasso, Ansel Adams, Vincent Van Gogh, Salvador Dali, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Leo Tolstoy, Robert Frost, and Edgar Allen Poe, Bill Gates, Ted Turner, Malcolm Forbes, Andrew Carnegie, William Randolph Hearst, Henry Ford, FW Woolworth, Walt Disney, Steven Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock, Henry Ford, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Orville Wright, Wilbur Wright, Alexander Graham Bell, John Lennon, Elvis Presley, Cher, Buddy Rich, Beethoven, Mozart, Handel, President John F. Kennedy, President Thomas Jefferson, President Abraham Lincoln, President Dwight Eisenhower, President George Bush, and President George W. Bush, Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Nicolai Tesla, Louis Pasteur, Galileo, and Sir Isaac Newton…
The list goes on. What were some of them told and what did they share?
Sydney Smith said, “The real object of education is to give children resources that will endure as long as life endures; habits that time will ameliorate, not destroy; occupation that will render sickness tolerable, solitude pleasant, age venerable, life more dignified and useful, and death less terrible.”
Reading, writing, and math are all important but there has to be more if we are to help our students actualize the above realities.
If you’re still with me – thanks for reading and listening!! I’d love to hear your thoughts on this…
Welcome to Teacher View Today - a forum for “teacher voice” and a platform for expressing concerns, sharing success stories and imparting strategies to help others successfully maneuver each day in the classroom. Whether teaching K-12 or college, we all share like experiences. I hope you’ll consider Teacher View Today your “go to” place for collaboration outside your classroom. Nancy Ellington
The Real Object of Education…
The real object of education is to give children resources that will endure as long as life endures; habits that time will ameliorate, not destroy; occupation that will render sickness tolerable, solitude pleasant, age venerable, life more dignified and useful, and death less terrible. Sydney Smith
Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.
Robert Frost
Stop Questioning?
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." Albert Einstein
A child’s spontaneity
“We cannot know the consequences of suppressing a child's spontaneity when he is just beginning to be active. We may even suffocate life itself. That humanity which is revealed in all its intellectual splendor during the sweet and tender age of childhood should be respected with a kind of religious veneration. It is like the sun which appears at dawn or a flower just beginning to bloom. Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life.”
Maria Montessori
Collaboration
Collaboration is a gift. We collaborate with others throughout our lives and when we create a really special bond, are always surprised at the richness the encounter can bring. Take advantage of the richness collaboration can bring to your table.
Working with others makes any process less stressful. Sharing concerns as well as successes lightens your load!
Thoughts on writing
Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.
Isaac Asimov
Teacher Income…
Mean instructional salaries according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics updated March 27,2012…
Kindergarten/Elementary/
Secondary School - $56,790
"I want my children to understand the world, but not just because the world is fascinating and the human mind is curious. I want them to understand it so that they will be positioned to make it a better place. Knowledge is not the same as morality, but we need to understand if we are to avoid past mistakes and move in productive directions. An important part of that understanding is knowing who we are and what we can do... Ultimately, we must synthesize our understandings for ourselves. The performance of understanding that try matters are the ones we carry out as human beings in an imperfect world which we can affect for good or for ill." Howard Gardner
As educators we seem to be inundated with stress everywhere we look these days. It’s during our most stressful times however, that we can actually make the greatest gains in life.
Eleanor Roosevelt said, “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing, which you think you cannot do."
How do you cope with classroom stress?
This Time
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.”
Crazy Busy
Balance is important in our lives. In today’s world we find little time to do much more than work and eek by with everything else.
Edward Hallowell, M.D. says, “Simplifying your schedule is a matter of living in a way that reflects your life’s natural rhythm.” He authored a book called CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and about to snap: Strategies for coping in a World Gone ADD. His seven strategies for coping with time crunches are -
1. Don’t multitask
2. Keep to-do lists short
3. Delegate
4. Be positive
5. Limit interruptions
6. See organization as a means, not an end
7. Don’t lose sleep over it
Hallowell, E. (2006). Stop the Insanity. Psychology Today, 39(5), 37.
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